'Yellow Vultures' to target speeders

ROAD safety chiefs have signalled a huge roll-out of average-speed cameras across Scotland after research showed they led to a dramatic fall in speeding offences.

Sources close to Transport Scotland, the agency responsible for trunk roads, yesterday said they were calculating costs and identifying potential sites for the technology, which the police regard as life-saving.

The case for more Yellow Vultures – as they are nicknamed – has been given a boost by a steep drop in their price. A single set of average-speed cameras used to cost 1 million but now they can be bought up for as little as 200,000.

There are currently two Vulture systems in Scotland, on the A77 from Glasgow to Ayr, where systems are designed to keep speeds down to 50pm on a 32-mile stretch of the once notorious road, and on the A80.

Roads thought most likely to be among the first to get new average-speed cameras include stretches of the A82 from Glasgow to Fort William, the A1 from Edinburgh to Berwick, the A9 from Perth to Inverness, the A90 north of Aberdeen and the A72 in the Borders.

Transport Scotland has signalled it favours more of the cameras, which are designed to catch motorists who try to get round the current single cameras by braking on approach.

The second group of average-speed cameras were installed on the A80 last November.

Before they went up, police were snaring up to 100 drivers a day for failing to slow down for the roadworks. More than 600 were reported to the procurator-fiscal on serious speeding charges in the six months up to November. Since then, only 26 have been caught speeding by the cameras.

Jim Dale of the Scottish Safety Camera Programme, "We are working with Transport Scotland to look at criteria that would allow us to make a business case for more."